Flynt Leverett's 1000 Words--What the Administration Doesn't Want You to Read

by emptywheel

Steve Clemons provides us with extensive detail about the Administration's latest efforts to squelch any free discussion about their disastrous foreign policy.

In an unprecedented case, the White House National Security Council staff has insinuated itself into a "secrets-clearing" process normally overseen by the CIA Publications Review Board which screens the written work of former government officials to make sure that state secrets don't find their way into the op-ed pages of the New York Times, Washington Post, or in other of the nation's leading papers, journals, and books.

Flynt Leverett, a former government official who worked at the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of State, and on the National Security Council staff of the George W. Bush administration, is now a senior fellow and Director of the Geopolitics of Energy Initiative at the New America Foundation.

[snip]

The White House has now forced the CIA to heavily censor a 1000 word op-ed draft planned for the New York Times that is based on a much larger product he produced under the sponsorship of the Century Foundation titled "Dealing with Tehran:  Assessing US Diplomatic Options Toward Iran."  (A pdf of the article can be downloaded here.)

Clemons doesn't provide the actual op-ed, but he publishes Leverett's statement in which he describes what they're complaining about:

The op-ed is based on the longer paper I just published with The Century Foundation -- which was cleared by the CIA without modifying a single word of the draft. Officials with the CIA's Publication Review Board have told me that, in their judgment, the draft op-ed does not contain classified material, but that they must bow to the preferences of the White House.

The White House is demanding, before it will consider clearing the op-ed for publication, that I excise entire paragraphs dealing with matters that I have written about (and received clearance from the CIA to do so) in several other pieces, that have been publicly acknowledged by Secretary Rice, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, and former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, and that have been extensively covered in the media.

These matters include Iran's dialogue and cooperation with the United States concerning Afghanistan in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and Iran's offer to negotiate a comprehensive "grand bargain" with the United States in the spring of 2003.  [my emphasis]

Well, this is ridiculous. Leverett can't publish the words he has already published because Dick Cheney doesn't want to have to engage in debate before he bombs Tehran. And presumably, Leverett can't just "liberate" the op-ed, because 1) he has promised it to the NYT and 2) he knows Dick is watching.

But 1000 words, out of a 30 page paper? That sounds like Fair Use to me. So, using the paper on which Leverett based his censored op-ed, I decided to try to reconstruct what it is the Administration is so worried about. Of course, this is not Leverett's op-ed. But it includes the things that the Administration is censoring. And probably includes a few more of the things the Administration would prefer not to have in the NYT op-ed pages. Again--this is not Leverett's op-ed. But these are his words, words that they surely don't want you to read.

As a result of the Bush administration’s reluctance to develop a comprehensive diplomatic approach to dealing with the Islamic Republic during the past five years, the chances that the United States and its allies will be able to reach this kind of strategic understanding with Tehran and forestall Iran’s effective nuclearization are decreasing. Already, the quality of the package that might be negotiated has declined in some respects: three years ago, when Iran offered to negotiate a grand bargain with the United States, it probably would have been possible to conclude a deal prohibiting the enrichment of uranium within Iran; at this point, any agreement acceptable to Tehran would almost certainly have to permit operation of a closely monitored pilot facility for enrichment in Iran.

[snip]

There is little prospect that the United States will muster sufficient multilateral economic and political pressure—through the United Nations Security Council or on a “coalition of the willing” basis—to leverage changes in Iranian behavior, especially on the nuclear issue.

[snip]

Numerous analyses have raised serious doubts that U.S. military strikes against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure would delay significantly its nuclear development, because of profound uncertainty about the reliability and comprehensiveness of target selection, the possibility that “unknown” facilities are at least as close to producing weapons-grade fissile material as “known” facilities, and the prospect that Tehran could reconstitute its nuclear program relatively rapidly. At the same time, U.S. military action against Iran almost certainly would have profoundly negative consequences for a range of other U.S. interests.

There also is no reasonable basis for believing that the United States could bring about regime change in Iran, either by “decapitating” the Islamic Republic’s leadership in the course of military strikes against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure or by supporting Iranian opposition groups under the cover of “democracy promotion.” More significantly, it is highly uncertain that regime change could be effected on a strategically meaningful timetable for dealing with the nuclear threat.

As Iranian officials have repeatedly made clear in diplomatic exchanges and private conversations, Iran will not agree to strategically meaningful restraints on the development of its nuclear infrastructure without having its core security concerns addressed. This means that Tehran will require, among other things, a security guarantee from Washington—effectively a commitment that the United States will not use force to change the borders or form of government of the Islamic Republic of Iran—bolstered by the prospect of a lifting of U.S. unilateral sanctions and normalization of bilateral relations.

[snip]

In essence, the United States needs to pursue a “grand bargain” with the Islamic Republic—that is, a broad-based strategic understanding in which all of the outstanding bilateral differences between the two countries would be resolved as a package. Implementation of the reciprocal commitments entailed in a grand bargain would almost certainly play out over time and probably in phases, but all of thecommitments would be agreed as a package.

[snip]

Unfortunately, the Bush administration is moving at a glacial pace, if at all, toward such an approach. Throughout the administration’s first term in office, the president and his senior national security and foreign policy advisers seemed collectively unable to deal with the imperatives of a comprehensive diplomatic strategy toward Iran. While there have been some tactical adjustments since the beginning of President Bush’s second term, the fundamental strategic deficit in the administration’s approach remains uncorrected. To be sure, for a year and a half after September 11, the administration pursued a limited tactical engagement with Iran with regard to Afghanistan. Well before President Bush took office in January 2001, the United States had joined the United Nations’ “6+2” framework for Afghanistan. In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the Bush administration used the cover of the “6+2” process to stand up what was effectively a freestanding bilateral channel with Iran, with regular (for the most part, monthly) meetings between U.S. and Iranian diplomats.

U.S. engagement with Tehran over Afghanistan provided significant and tangible benefits for the American position during the early stages of the war on terror. At a minimum, U.S. engagement with Tehran helped to neutralize the threat of Iranian actions on the ground, either by Afghan proxies or by Iranian intelligence and paramilitary assets, which could have made prosecution of Operation Enduring Freedom and subsequent post-conflict stabilization more difficult. More positively, engagement elicited crucial diplomatic cooperation from Iran, both during the war and afterwards. Over years, Iran had cultivated
extensive relationships with key players on the Afghan political scene, including important warlords in northern and western Afghanistan. Iranian influence was critical for arming and managing these players during the U.S.-led coalition’s military operations. After the war, Iranian influence induced these players to support the political settlement enshrined at the Bonn Conference in December 2001, when the Afghan Interim Authority under Hamid Karzai was established.

[snip]

On the nuclear issue, the administration refused to consider direct negotiations with Tehran for nearly four years after the revelations of Iran’s efforts to develop a uranium enrichment capability. In the spring of 2003, the Iranian Foreign Ministry sent, via Swiss diplomatic channels, a proposal for negotiations aimed at resolving all outstanding bilateral differences between Tehran and Washington, including the nuclear issue. The proposal was described as having been endorsed by all the major power centers in Iran, including the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The administration’s response was to complain to the Swiss Foreign Ministry that the Swiss ambassador in Tehran had exceeded his brief by passing such a paper. It is worth noting that the Iranian message came to Washington shortly after the conclusion of major combat operations in Iraq and well before the emergence of the insurgency there—in other words, the Iranian offer was extended at a time when U.S. standing in the region appeared to be at its height. It is also worth recalling that, when the Iranian offer was made, the Islamic Republic was not spinning centrifuges or enriching uranium and the reformist Mohammad Khatami was still president.

[snip]

Whether supported by a regional security framework or not, the foregoing analysis lays out the essential features of a U.S.-Iranian grand bargain. If Washington does not begin to pursue such an arrangement vigorously and soon, the window for this kind of strategic understanding between the United States and the Islamic Republic is likely to close. Under these circumstances, Iran’s development of at least a nuclear weapons option in the next few years is highly likely.

Thus, if it does not pursue a grand bargain with Tehran, the United States almost certainly will have to take up the more daunting and less potentially satisfying challenges of coping with a nuclear-capable Iran. And the standing of the United States in the world’s most strategically critical region will continue its already disturbing decline.

There. That's actually around 1120 words, but I didn't want to cut into his cohesive paragraphs, or cut out the details of the things--the cooperation in Afghanistan and the 2003 offer from Iran--that we know the Administration doesn't want us to read. 1120 words they're willing to invent reasons not to publish.

Mind you--you should just go ahead and read his whole longer paper. It is very readable, and oh-so-refreshingly sane. Just in case you don't click through, though, here are two more really important bits. He describes how US actions have actually made Iran stronger:

U.S. military action in the post–September 11 period eliminated the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq, two of the Islamic Republic’s most ardent enemies, thereby improving Iran’s strategic position; moreover, the failures of U.S efforts at post-conflict stabilization in both countries created vacuums that Iran has moved adroitly to fill. The tightening of global energy markets and the sharp rise in energy prices since 2003 have increased the economic resources available to the Iranian leadership and given Tehran diplomatic options (for example, vis-à-vis China) that were previously much less significant. And, particularly since the election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005, Iranian public diplomacy has increased the Islamic Republic’s appeal to the Arab street—including in Sunni-dominated states such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia. This makes it harder for Arab states to cooperate with the United States against Iranian interests, even at a time when these states feel increasingly threatened by Iran’s ascendance.

And he describes why Iran is so important--and why its position continues to get stronger because the rest of the world is less willing to piss it off.

Iran’s resource base is truly impressive. If one converts Iran’s reserves of natural gas—the second-largest in the world, after Russia’s—into barrels of oil equivalent (boe) and adds them to Iran’s proven reserves of conventional oil—the second-largest in the world, after Saudi Arabia15—Iran’s hydrocarbon resources are effectively equal to those of Saudi Arabia and significantly greater than those of Russia.16 Moreover, Iran’s low rates of production of crude oil and natural gas, relative to its reserves base, suggest that the Islamic Republic is perhaps the only major energy-producing state with the resource potential to increase production of both oil and gas by orders of magnitude over the next decade or so.

Iran, however, cannot realize this potential without significant infusions of investment capital and transfers of technology from abroad. Since the mid-1990s, U.S. policy has sought to constrain the development of Iran’s hydrocarbon resources by barring U.S. energy companies from doing business there and threatening European companies undertaking projects in Iran with secondary sanctions under the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act.18 These policies, combined with a problematic investment climate in the Islamic Republic, have limited investment flows and transfers of technology into Iran’s oil and gas sectors. Now, however, China is putting large amounts of capital into Iranian energy projects and Russia has agreed to help Iran develop its largely untapped potential as a producer and exporter of natural gas. One way or another, Iran will play an increasingly important role in the global energy balance over the next quarter century. In this regard, the key foreign policy question is: What external players will help Iran out of its U.S.-constructed “box” and reap significant strategic gains for doing so? [my emphasis]

The rest is a thoughtful, detailed description of what the "grand bargain" would look like, and how the Administration may have already missed its chance to pursue such a "grand bargain."

So here are the dangerous--yet unclassified ideas that the Administration doesn't want you to know:

The Administration's efforts in the Middle East are strengthening Iran. The options the Neocons would pursue--bombing and more stalling--are bound to fail. The only appropriate action is to negotiate a "grand bargain" with Iran, in which we forgo our policy of regime change in exchange for some assurances that Iran will not pursue a nuclear weapon (it is too late, Leverett says, to prevent it from getting the technology). Past history--particularly our cooperation with Iran during the Afghan war and the offer Iran made to us in 2003--shows that Iran would be willing to pursue a "grand bargain."

But I guess that's why they don't want you to read Leverett's 1000 words. If you read them, you would know that the bloodshed and failure coming our way are not--at least were not--the only option.

Comments

[Meteor Blades]

Thanks, emptywheel, you've made a brilliant tactical move here, generating an Op-Ed that the White House can't censor.

"The Administration's efforts in the Middle East are strengthening Iran."

When-oh-when are the right-wing backers of this administration - in and out of the media, on and off the blogosphere - going to figure out that the GOP, as run by Mister Bush and his mentors and minions are the exact opposite of what they claim to be: strong on national security?

[emptywheel]

Well, that was the idea, at least, MB.

We ought to start circulating versions of this to prove just how futile and pathetic their latest attempts to censor information are.

[mainsailset]

Can't help but smile at the ingenuity. I seem to remember a line one of Brad Pitt's characters uttered, 'Aye, but they would do well to remember that I am not alone, there are thousands at my back'.

[Sn]

http://www.cdi.org/pdfs/Press%20Guide%20to%20WSI%20Experts.pdf

www.worldsecurityinstitute.org/presscontact.htm

Maybe the analysts that transferred to DOD/DIA from CIA ended up at the 'World Security Bureau' and not the US Institute For Peace(ISG creator) It looks like theyr'e working on China now and selling out of N Korea.

Maybe they needed the above cleared by CIA because the work that the US Navy(exercise) did with China as Kim launched his 'Chinese fireworks' on the 4th of July?

[undecided]

In fact, the currrent administration has proven to be so inept at national security, that a reasonable person might wonder if its actions, or lack thereof, are intentional.

[semiot]

As I have commented here or elsewhere before, I had an interesting conversation at Christmas 2004 with the husband of my first cousin, who happens to be a senior-level oil exploration engineer who works for one of the majors in Houston. As might be expected, I was still a bit non-plussed by the recent election results, and wanted to probe what had motivated people like him, clearly an intelligent fellow, to trust Bush - we had a brief talk about "peak oil," and he agreed that it is probably imminent, but that the "shape of the tail of the distribution" depended on the price of oil at the well-head. So I asked about Iraq. To wit, "Do you think Bush has made ANY mistakes in his Iraq adventure?" The answer: "No, things are going pretty much as planned, I think."

Now I don't credit this relative with any particular political insight - he let on that he got most of his information on the state of the political world from Fox News (sigh). However, I do credit him with special, high-level expertise regarding the interests of American oil majors, particularly in terms of future production and pricing arrangements. He did complain about the short-sightedness of "the financial people" he had to work with. But when it came to long-term energy strategy, he was hand in glove with BushCo.

I haven't had a chance to talk with him since - I think he thinks I'm some kind of dirty fucking hippy who learned how to finagle a living at the public trough, so we are not, shall I say, regular correspondents. I sure would like to ask him some questions about Iran, though. The "intel" in this post, EW, about Iran's standing as potential supplier of hydrocarbon-based energy is gripping. I wonder if my cousin's husband is happy now about prospects for tapping the Persian bonanza.

[p.lukasiak]

Actually, I think this may have been the part that was censored.... the evidence that the Bush regime had been in bi-lateral talks with Iran, that they were showing considerable progress, and Bush screwed everything up with his "axis of evil" speech....

Tehran appeared to have a variety of motives for cooperating with Bush administration on Afghanistan. At a minimum, Iranian policymakers—well
aware of the State Department’s longstanding description of the Islamic Republic as the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism—wanted to avoid getting caught on the downside of the administration’s self-declared “global war on terror.” But Iran also seemed to sense a potential strategic opportunity. Iranian diplomats involved in the bilateral channel on Afghanistan indicated to their U.S. counterparts that the discussions were being closely followed at the highest levels of the Iranian power structure and that there was considerable interest in Tehran in the possibility of a wider diplomatic opening. Certainly, from an Iranian perspective, the platform had been created for exploring such an opening.

However, in his January 2002 State of the Union address (just six weeks after the Bonn Conference), President Bush placed the Islamic Republic in the axis of evil,” along with North Korea and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Iranian representatives missed the next monthly meeting with U.S. diplomats in protest, but—in a telling indication of Tehran’s seriousness about exploring a diplomatic opening to the United States—resumed participation in the discussions the following month. The bilateral channel on Afghanistan continued for another year, until the eve of the Iraq war, but it became clear the Bush administration was not interested in a broader, strategic dialogue with Iran. Indeed, the administration terminated the channel in May 2003, on the basis of unproven and never pursued allegations of the involvement of Iran-based al Qaeda figures in the May 12, 2003, bomb attacks in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.23

Every one remembers what a huge deal it was when the ISG report suggested talking to Iran -- and the Bush administration acted like the whole idea was inconceivable. Leverette reveals here that there were bilateral monthly meetings right up until "the eve of the Iraq war", and that Iran was co-operatiing with the US on Afghanistan, and suggests that Iran was ready for wider co-operation --- and Bush turned them into an enemy.

[Mimikatz]

I think your last two paragraphs are the ones they didn't want published. Iran has gained more than any country from Bush's missteps in the ME and they are in the catbird seat, with the help of Russia and China, as far as developing resources for the last push for fossil fuels.

Every time I hear someone say that Obama's Achilles heel is his lack of serious foreign policy and national security experience I want to gag. Rumsfeld and Cheney had more than any two people combined, and look where they led us. The issues are (1) judgment and values; (2) willing to listen to others and work with them while maintaining core principles and (3) being able to judge others on these skills. BushCo has done the countyry such damage. I hope it hits thier backers where it hurts as well.

[William Ockham]

The redacted editorial has been published by the NYT (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/22/opinion/22leverett.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin). Anybody up for a game of fill in the blanks? I'm swamped by work from my day job, but I can play next week.

I'm really curious about the last redaction. A single word (or perhaps a word and a number) on the second web page. What possible concern could they have had?